


Leave Out All The Rest

by SkySamuelle



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Friendship, Non-Judging Breakfast Club, post 2.13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:16:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4744304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkySamuelle/pseuds/SkySamuelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it takes seeing your world to shatter before realizing which strings keep it together. A post 2.13 story about Chuck rediscovering the meaning of words like family, friendship, and love as the NJBC comes to his resue in Bangkok. An occasion for those around him to realize the impact he had on their lives and to stop his freefall into darkness .</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Family

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: For 2.13 only
> 
> AN: I write this in response to a prompt by my friend Leona. I hope you enjoy it, even if it turned out a bit different from our original intentions.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric and the aftershock of his family falling apart in 'Brother, where the bart are you', throughout three conversations: with his sister, with his mother, with Chuck. A verbal family portrait, if you want.

> _Don't be afraid I've taken my beating_
> 
> _I've shared what I've made_
> 
> _I'm strong on the surface Not all the way through_
> 
> _I've never been perfect But neither have you_
> 
> _So if you're asking me I want you to know_
> 
> _When my time comes Forget the wrong that I've done_
> 
> _Help me leave behind some_
> 
> _Reasons to be missed_
> 
> _Don't resent me And when you're feeling empty_
> 
> _Keep me in your memory_
> 
> **(Leave out all the rest) --Linkin Park-**
> 
>  

**PART ONE: FAMILY**

"You are leaving" Eric states dispassionately, standing on the threshold of his sister's bedroom, watching her packing.

Two suitcases are on her bed and she is bent over them, taking in and out an endless array of colourful stuff that Eric doesn't care to identify. The scene reeks of deja-vu and he hates the feeling. It's too difficult to accept that they came all this way this past year, just to lose all their progress so quickly, so unexpectedly.

" I've decided to give Aaron a real chance" Serena chirps lightly, pretending that this isn't an inappropriate, hopeless replay of her last departure. He wants to snort, to deliver some crude but true comment that will force Serena to stop her impatient business and look at him instead.

But that is more of a Chuck Bass way of doing things. He can't tell to his sister that she is acting like her mother's daughter, even if that's the uncomfortable truth. Van Der Woodsens don't shape their reality to match their feelings; they reshape their feelings to grow comfortable in their reality.

"And do you need going in Brazil to do that? " There's enough incredulous sarcasm here that his sister can't not pick up on it, but Serena just shrugs, stalks to her huge, open closet and, still avoiding to glance at him, replies noncommittally "Some time apart to unstress will do all of us good"

"Yeah, because that strategy has worked so well in past"

For a moment he's surprised at how condescending he sounds. It's almost as if his brother's shadow is lurking behind his tone. It makes his chest heave with a bitterness that tastes like angry nostalgia.

"It's different" Serena shrugs once more, distracting herself with the hard choice between an ankle-length cream-colored shirt and dark blue shorts.

Eric is tempted to argue that it's not all that different. Last time she had ran away from an imaginary murder, from a lifetime where she was too scared to take a chance with Nate and too selfish to not monopolize his attention. She had come back stronger and gentler. Now she was running from a broken family and a broken love before the mirage of might-be-been finished dissolving into dust.

Different complications, same pattern.

He would empathize more if he wasn't the one who usually lingers behind, still and quiet and fading into the background as two blonde and wilful women rush him by.

"Do I need remind you how you clung to Dan in front of Aaron at Bart's funeral? That you actually went on a hissy fit when Chuck wanted him out? Chuck, who had just lost his only parent? You can't box all of that and hope things fix by themselves while you are on vacation!"

This time, his words must have reached her, because she shoved her clothes back into the closet with a deep sigh and turned toward him, arms crossing defensively in from of her chest. "It's all over, I can't do anything about… anything, if I stay!"

"Like you can't make your heart leave out Dan and take in the new boyfriend? It's not stopping you from trying! If you stay, maybe we can still get through to Chuck, bring him back to home. He has no one left now. He shouldn't be alone, even if he believes he has to."

Serena shakes her head. "I've know him longest than you did, Eric. He has a short memory span when it comes to certain facts. There was a time when I saw him and Nate more often than our mother and then I was away for one year and it was all gone, like the four of us had never grown alongside each other. I know he makes it easy and safe when he plays your scheming protector…he was like that to me and Blair once. It doesn't mean the same to him as it does to you. It doesn't stop him from ripping you apart if it becomes convenient."

Eric falters a little before his sister's suddenly intense gaze, remembering Chuck's haunting, hard expression of exasperated anger and disgust the last time they spoke. It's not that he didn't know Chuck had a penchant for harsh lashing-outs, but experiencing it first-hand had been an unexpected low-blow.

Yet, there were other factors to take in consideration. Like the fact that Eric had never had never had to put up with the offensive jokes and pranks most of young guys do when they confess publicly their homosexuality. A Bass's approval and support came in a variety of strangely-shaped, omitted-when-in conversation-ways.

"The point is that it meant something for _us._ So we should simply…let him pull away?"

Indecision softens Serena's features for a fistful of silent seconds, colouring it slightly hopeful, but he knows everything is lost when she looks away and toward the open suitcases.

"He won't allow you to help until he cools. Get in his way before that and he will remove you forcefully, in the most traumatic fashion imaginable. "

It occurs to him for the first time that maybe she was anticipating this falling out before the wake, before the funeral. That she really cares about Chuck too, even if she was uneasy with demonstrating it in front of goody idealist ex-boyfriends.

"Serena…"

"Let Blair handle him for now. If there's someone who can reach him when he is like this, it's her. "

Eric doesn't really know what to do with that statement. On a hand, he doesn't feels like getting chewed out by a grief-stricken, hateful step-brother again, especially if he must do it alone. It makes him feel like a delusional, clingy kid who imagines affection even where it isn't here.

On another hand, he is willing to risk his pride if there's a chance for success, and leaving it all on Blair's shoulders doesn't feel right.

"They got the same coping mechanisms."

Blair has been uncharacteristically mellow around their brother so far. But how do two people who are constantly on the defensive meet without crashing?

"And that's why they will somehow manage to communicate with each other in their own twisted, mysterious code."

She looks like so sure of herself as she says it, and the sad smile on her lips matches that in her cerulean eyes, so Eric finds himself nodding, believing.

Perhaps they are just taking the easy way out, but even Nate has been reluctant to go after Chuck in his moody state. What does he know? Perhaps they are right and waiting the storm out will sort this mess out.

* * *

Eric understands that time is not a reliable medicine when he finds his mother holding her head in her hands, curled up on the couch in front of the fireplace.

She doesn't acknowledges his entrance at first, but then she seems to shake herself out of her daze, recognizing his steps as he advances toward her, and she uncovering her face to turn it toward him.

Her eyes are clouded by some heavy emotion too disquieting to name, like she wanted to cry but forbade herself to, and she bites her lips before confessing:

"I drove Charles out of New York."

Her voice is low, tired. He has heard her use this intonation only few times and he never liked the news it delivered.

"Where has he gone? "

"All I know is that Arthur drove him to the airport last night, and that he hadn't cared to pack anything."

"That is not much to go on." Eric frowns. Losing track of Chuck now, on top of Serena being out of reach and Lily on verge of cracking , isn't giving him a positive outlook on the situation.

He wants to say that if there was no luggag then, the trip would be short but it would be a lie too uninspired and transparent to be of any comfort.

"I know- she hesitates, pinching the bridge of her delicate nose and puffing a little breath- I'm afraid for him, all alone God-only-knows-where and so very angry…I should have him handled him better."

Eric lays a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, feels her body tremble slightly at the contact and represses the misgiving her reaction gives.

"He's difficult to know how to handle"

Lily's naked lips curl up in a grimace of gratitude, but by the next second she is looking down at her Gucci shoes.

"I told him Bart's death was his fault"

"What?"

He must have misheard, he is certain of it until Lily's gaze lifts to meet his once more. Guilty as charged.

"I'm so sorry"- dejectedly-spoken, her excuses tumble out of her mouth in a broken rush- "but you know how he can be, aiming clever insults and going for the kill. And I felt so guilty, for chatting up Rufus when Bart was asking for a second chance… "

Eric's mouth hangs open as he listens her ranting, the onslaught of shock and indignation silencing any request for clarity he could to want to formulate.

It was starkly clear now, why Chuck was so deliberately, violently disrespectful to his step-mother while he mostly ignored his stepsiblings. The marriage was going to end anyhow, the same way the rest of her relationships –romantic or not- sank in the past. The boy idly wondered if his mother would use those stupid files as a excuse to end everything, to avoid working through the difficulties and jump to her old flame. There had been an affair? If so, he didn't want to know. Ironically, he already feels cheate, for buying the fairytale act and believing that this time around would be different, with Bart's stolid solidity grounding Lily's natural flightiness, Chuck's raging pessimism balancing Serena's fragile optimism.

"… I'm so very ashamed. Charles was putting the blame on me and I felt so awful about his accusation that I just said the most hurtful… I never meant those things. None of them. They just… came out. "

"Wait, what did you say to him, exactly? Beside accusing him of causing his father's death, that's it. "

He tries to contain the reproach and disappointment steeling his inquiry, because he fears his mother will close up before sharing vital information, but he's not at all displeased with himself when he fails at the task and feels them seeping in.

Lily makes an odd gesture with her hand, as if to smooth her hair back although it's already pulled in a tight bun, but she doesn't shies away from his accusing gaze.

_Seeking absolution, mom?_ _Pretty useless if you never learn._

She sits a bit straighter, rubbing her chin, resignation and defeat written all over her beautiful face.

"I told him Bart would never have come to the Dance if he hadn't called him.- a pause, a self-depreciating sigh- That he called his father because they were the same. Untrusting, controlling. God, what a kind of person spits all of that on a grieving son? On a boy she cares for?"

And Lily pins him again with dry, pleading blue eyes but Eric is drained speechless. He can't be spiteful to his mother for the same reasons he can never stay mad at Serena. They are lost, flawed girls hiding under the guise of elusive, graceful goddesses, burning harder to blind everyone with their light, too scared someone could touch them and realize the inconsistency underneath.

"To think I had the gall to preach at him about how he was supposed to open up, value the people who love him like his father never did… I'm horrible."

For some reason, watching her to cry all over herself is beginning to grate him, more and more with every passing second. Yes, she is been horrible. The living proof that wicked stepmoms are real and arrogant about it too. No, he doesn't know what a kind of person spews all that bullshit on a recently orphaned seventeen-years old, but probably not a very decent one.

What does Lily expects now her confession-time is over? A complacent pat on her back? A hug? His blessing for another doubtlessly doomed try with Rufus? Oh God, he had been so idiotic to play along and agree to spend Thanksgiving with the Humphreys!

"No- he interjects firmly- you are immature and egocentric, which is probably why Chuck once claimed to like you."

As a matter of fact, Chuck had stated so once, when they were sharing a joint during the Van Der Bass honeymoon. Brotherly bonding while stoned, such a classy occupation.

_You know, little E, p_ _erhaps I am more like the Van Der Woodsen half of the family: sexy, easy and utterly shameless about it._

_Eww, Chuck._ _That's odd if you think it over. So, am I like Bart, gloomy and boring?_

_Mhh, not so much. I sense y_ _ou got at least a tiny bit of humour hiding under that dreadfulyl highlighted mop._

_Don't insult my hair._

_I'm stating a fact. If I was insulting, I would get so much more creative._

Lily flinches, but Eric doesn't stop talking. Suddenly, he is so full of words than he feels like he could burst if he doesn't get them out of his system.

"You are the adult in this so called family, it doesn't matter how often you forget it. Do you want to know a thing? Any rude, cruel remark he could have used against you shouldn't have fazed you. If you could focus on anyone else beside yourself for more than three minutes, you would have realized he was just pointing his finger at you to not hold himself responsible!"

His mother stands up, finally, her expression alive with distress.

"I know it! Don't you think I would take it all back if I could? I brewed a disaster, and in the end it was all for nothing, and now I've a missing stepson with no chance to fix it."

Eric shrinks back from the arm which stretches toward him, from the palm reaching out.

 _In_ _the end it was all for nothing._ He should have asked what she meant by it, but he feels already sufficiently stuffed with bad feelings that he doesn't want inside. He can be a coward, but he won't give his mother the chance to disappoint him more. Not today at least.

So he turns on his heels and leaves the room. He will abuse his i-pod and pretend he is in an empty house.. It was the sounds he grew up to and once hated but now he finds it preferable to Lily's hypocritical platitudes.

* * *

Two days later, someone calls him at 4:30 am. Insistently, until he wakes and grabs the musical disturbance on his bedside.

Unknown number, the display reveals, but Eric's brain snaps alert in a nanosecond. He _knows_ \- or at least, he hopes he does- who might be calling at this hour.

"Hello?"

Sounds unidentifiable, loud voices and crappy music blend together in an unpromising cacophony, but no voice answers him.

"Chuck?"

A breath hitches on the other side and Eric sits up smiling.

"I'm drunk-calling"

His inopportunely welcome anonymous caller justifies, slurring heavily around every single syllable.

"Really?"

Talk about obvious statements.

"Yeah, really. I thought I would check in, just to see if you were still as pathetic to expect a goodbye kiss"

Eric briefly tries to summon the image, then shakes it off with mild embarrassment.

"I don't know if I am any more pathetic than a guy who calls me just to verify my degree of patheticism "

A booming, gasping laughter from his interlocutor awards the attempt to wit. It's encouraging to get something right, finally.

"Where are you?"

"What does it matter? I'm not coming back."

"Okay"

It's not okay, but what can he do about it? Beside keeping a would-be brother drunk out of his ass talking, until some hints of his whereabouts were unwillingly given?

"It's okay- Chuck confirms, all at once calmer, less entertained -you should say so to Blair. Get her to remember how awful I am. It will heal her romantic misconceptions"

"I don't follow you"

"Oh shit, are you turning into Nathaniel?"

Eric can imagine the smirk, the gratuitous eye-rolling and mimics both. "Please…- if that ever happens, he is _so_ signing himself in Ostroff with no complaints- anyway, what's about Blair?"

Chuck scoffs loudly, but eventually follows through his original line of conversation "Apparently she loves me and would stand at my side through anything. She told so. It was a very dramatic, poetically worded declaration. I bet she has written it and tried it on in front of the mirror before joining in my family drama."

"That would be a very Blair-thing to do.- Eric admits, quite amused to smell a glimmer of gratification under the amplified crassness and bravado- Tell me again why you are gloating from what I assume is another country and not straight in my face?"

A sound of things crashing and shattering ensues in reply, but there are no words.

"Hey! Have I just struck the great Chuck Bass speechless?"

It's the first time Eric uses the 'I'm Chuck Bass ' aphorism against its owner, and he does so with an unplanned, ironic acrimony. Perhaps he felt more betrayed than he first allowed himself to realize, but this is neither the moment nor the place to share it.

At last, there are words again.

"It's not so much that I don't _feel_ \- Chuck grumbles into the phone- It's that what I feel isn't worth a thing."

Eric blinks, shell-shocked. He doesn't have the time to ponder if this obscure affirmation is an apology of sorts or something less or- most likely, something more. There's a key hidden in between what is been flaunted and what went unsaid, and it's so very frustrating to not grasp it.

The line falls dead.

**END**

 

 


	2. Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck hits rock bottom, Nate and Blair align their priorities.

**PART TWO:** **FRIENDS**

"This is not really about you, you know"He mutters resentfully at the shadow of his father dancing behind his closed eyelids. Bart Bass: a glaring, unfeeling ghost no more distant in death than he had been in life.

Everything around him is covered in sweat and alcohol, sheathed into a darkness too deep to be delved. He was filthy, wet, sticky. He felt the grim and it was disgusting, but it was just what he deserved. It was where he belonged, among the trash, covered in filth. Not in Blair's bed, in Blair's soft arms, surrounded by Blair's scent.

"This is about me, about the fact I somehow managed to off both of my parents without even meaning. I envy those who call themselves my friends for having that simplicity of mind they call goodness. I stole Blair and then I abandoned her, again and again, knowing it would hurt her. I Revelled in knowing that she was supposed to be Nathaniel's but she wanted to be mine instead. When it comes down to it,it doesn't matter what you really thought about me. You could not have loved something which reflected the very worst of you. I couldn't have loved someone who never let me to forget that I was a murderer."

 _And we were all_ _what each other had._

Chuck laughs out loud at the thought, stretching the sound until his throat feels raw and his head thuds against the wall. What a fucking joke! He is shaking, his body eventually growing limp with exhaustion, slumping and sliding down an hard vertical surface he hasn't the sense or memory to recognize. He rubs his eyes until they hurts, wanting to erase that fucking image of an accusing, disapproving almost-stranger from his mind.

Bart has raised his son to think of himself as something so dark and destructive than it could only kill while coming into existence. Why should Bart's true, ultimate sentiments matter at all? It's too late to change.

"You won. I'm evil. Evilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevil EVILEVIL EVILEVILEVILEVIL !"

The mantra becomes a scream.

Then Chuck Bass falls into a bottomless abyss, his senses flickering out one by one as he passes out.

"I've asked Jack to find him"

Lily announces over breakfast, milking her tea. She's composed and flawlessly coiffed, elegantly dressed in black to mirror a grief Eric now knows she doesn't feel. He doesn't look up at her while he butters up his toast, but he can't refrain from nodding.

There are matching dark circles under their eyes and perhaps it means something. Not enough, but something.

Eric is not been able to sleep since Chuck called. Bits of their short, vague conversation keep swirling in his head.

" _It's not so much that I don't feel. It's that what I feel isn't worth a thing."_

It's _that_ bit his restless mind won't let go. He tries and tries to interpret it differently, but the unspoken meaning still sounds too much like ' _I_ 'm not worth a thing'. It scares him because he knows more than anyone where that way of thinking will bring you, and he can't think of Chuck Bass - larger than life, master puppeteer of Upper East Side, self-appointed big brother- coming to that.

There has to be something he can do.

' **Chuck called** **. I'm worried. Can we meet?'**

His fingers hesitate over the send button of his cell. Sending it to Blair suddenly feels wrong, like gloating over an empty victory. So he runs down the list of names and clicks on Nate instead.

Nate Archibald 's fascination with Brooklyn might mystify the most of his acquaintances, but its source is always been perfectly obvious to him and to those who really know him. There's a indefinable sense of freedom to be found by losing yourself in other people's lives, fading into the background of an unfamiliar environment. Inside, past the money and the glamour, the family scandals and the fashionable clothes, he remains a High Society child. At least here, none can see there's no solid ground under his feet, no sincere drive to propel his decisions.

Nate decides it must be how Chuck feels when he flees New York to lose himself in European capitals and exotic heavens.

The blond boy frowns, pale eyes glazed as he stares into his coffee cup. It's strange, finding himself worrying about his best friend 's whereabouts.

Usually, when Chuck falls into one of black moods, he pulls his solo disappearing act and returns collected, refreshed, once and again ready to tempt in ways you want be tempted, to say things too outrageous for you have thought it first, or things you thought but wouldn't have the gall to confess.

When they were kids, Nate remembers being drawn right away to that ever serious, pale little boy who seemed to have no problem being alone, and yet managed to shrug off everyone's attention without excessive interest when he caught it. Even when they were kids, Chuck was never been very sociable. Actually there had been a case of another child who had gotten bitten by the youngest Bass on the nose – on the nose! In front of everyone!- for introducing himself in the wrong way.

It was ironic that Georgina Sparks was the one to talk to him first, befriend him first. Nate remembers being envious of that, watching Serena to follow after her _other_ brunette friend, while Blair held on his arm, holding him back, urging him to fear the new boy that would bite him too, if he dared to walk over with the girls .

Who would guess they'd end almost brothers?

They were always so different, but Chuck Bass' legendary independence and craftiness evoked a kind of envious fascination in a blonde, angel-faced boy who seemed to know better what he didn't want rather what he wanted .

In contrast, his best friend has always been so formidably headstrong, so unwavering certain of his position in the world that it made too easy to let him to talk you into anything, and all too natural to both admire him and resent him for it.

Nate often thought that his life would be a lot more enjoyable if only he could be a bit more like his surrogate brother. More free, less restrained.

With all his destructive tendencies, his faults on display, Chuck had always been noone but himself, not the product of an uptight, colourless upbringing.

Mind you, none of this means being his friend is a walk in the sunshine.

Chuck's guidance, you soon learnt, didn't come without a price. However tolerant and amused he could be of anyone else's character's flaws, he demanded to manage his issues by himself, to keep his motives and his tantrums unquestioned, his casual cruelty toward others ignored.

Nate always acquiesced because it seemed fair to concede his friends all the space they wanted, when they wanted. Not influencing their choices, the way you wished someone did not for you. Respecting their silences, not forcing conversations on unpleasant subjects.

It was fair- he frowns- and it's what a good friend would do.

So why, in a time of extreme necessity, would Chuck call Eric?

To apologize for his harshness at the funeral? Nah, Basses never apologized, they just made up for whatever wrong he committed and expected all was forgotten.

So why?

"That coffee must be awful"

Silently confused, Nate looks away from the black liquid and up in two striking, exotic green eyes. Vanessa 's smile is always vibrant, even while tempered with concern.

Concern for him- the thought warms him even while he realizes he doesn't deserve being the object of her complete attention. Vanessa is _interesting ,_ determined and ambitious without those qualities detracting from her fierce idealism. A concrete dreamer, reassuring but not clingy, who gives without asking for anything in return, only because this is where her feelings lead her to.

He admires her in a way he has only admired the other three members of the Unjudging Breakfast Club.

Who can tell if that is love?

Vanessa slides in the booth before his, her unmanicured hand reaching so her fingers can brush his. He smiles at her bright-green nail-polish, imagining how Chuck and Blair would raise their eyebrows eloquently at that, whereas Serena would look away from it, dismissing it with a glance.

It feels very nice to know Vanessa is his ( even if he can't be of much use to anyone else).

"The coffee is fine. I'm the one who is not very appreciative today."

"Oh, believe me, you are doing fine. If Dan dropped off the face of planet, I would have worked myself in a frenzy by now."

And for some reason, although he knows that is not her intention to question, her admission gets him defensive.

"The disappearing act is always been Chuck's favourite way to kill stress. We got used to it, I think. But this time…his father and he had a weird relationship. We never talked about it if not in jest and that makes it worse because I can't tell what it's happening in his thick head, but I can't just ask, because that's not what we do with Chuck when he's upset, unless you want tobe insulted into a pulp and ignored for a week or so. "

His breath is short by the end, and this is how Nate realizes he had just _ranted_ in Vanessa's face. Her lips are discosed in a lovely O of surprise and the blaffed expression on her face would be comical in any other situation, in any other day.

"Wow. That was quite the tirade.'"

Nate shrugs it off with an easy smile, his eyes lowering to focus on her hand brushing his. It pleases him that Vanessa always seem to know what to do, but unlike Chuck or Blair she was never nowhere as pushy or authoritative. There's just this unpretentious, self-possessed strength about her which doesn't need to prove itself by assertion on other people. She had a way to comfort him in his confusion while leaving him free to direct himself where he saw to fit (except that one situation with Catherine, but he stopped holding onto that grudge).

Too bad that he has no idea what doing with that freedom.

"Perhaps I've been repressing a bit"

"You guess? "

The amused irony behind her reply nudges him to speak, to confide in her. It's easy to give in, and deep down he is pissed off with himself for his inability to never resolve anything on his own.

Once, he lived in this little ageless dimension where Serena and Blair and Chuck and himself were united and charged to take over the world. Blair and Chuck always being the driving force, somehow, with him too often star-struck by Serena and too many other things and Serena chasing every moment's euphoria in each imaginable form.

Now the past is more distant than it should to be, and they are all a bit older, more lost, drifting away from each other and toward unknown destination.

Magazines never said attaining maturity is so disorienting.

"Anything in particular pushed you today? You've been brooding since the second you came in "

Nate sighs, raising his gaze again to meet hers, largely grateful and only a teensy bit resentful for her perceptivity.

"Chuck called Eric last night, completely drunk and nearly-nonsensical. Eric called me because he got confused by something our prodigal son dropped on him before ending the phone call."

His brunette girlfriend tilts her head, her left hand curled under her chin. "Has he let on where he is hiding?"

"Nope. We haven't a clue. "

"At least he contacted someone. It has to mean he's getting better…that he's getting closer to come back. "

"You don't know that- Nate snaps, surprised at the bite he hears in his voice, and then he's breathing out more calmly –I'm used to him hopping on a plane and forgetting everyone when he needs to blow off some steam. But he never…ignored me like this. Even at the funeral, it was like he didn't see me at all. "

"You are nervous because he called Eric, and not you? "

The way she raises her eyebrows, moderate incredulity written over the creases of her mouth, is oddly reminiscent of Dan.

Put like that, it did sound petty and silly.

"It's weird" he concedes, even while not admitting anything. "This is my best friend and everyone knows how to help, except me. _I_ give him space and he flees the country."

"You give him what you wish other people gave you"

Vanessa remarks and he nods "Maybe it wasn't what he needed "

"There's not really a safe and peaceful way to spare someone their grief, Nate."

"It's not that. Eric says Lily and Chuck argued before he left, blamed on each other of Bart's death. It was bad"

He pauses, taking in the way his girlfriend cringes when he tells her that. He's surprised of how much he appreciates that her sympathy isn't solely directed to him, but also at his best friend.

Most of people tend to not understand why Nate relies on Chuck so much…his reputation doesn't paint him as the most trustworthy guy and whole the affair with Blair didn't help. Nate doesn't care too much because, in the end, those people are nothing to him and he's nothing to them- especially since the Captain dragged the family name through the mud- , but it's easier being here and knowing that Vanessa genuinely –platonically-likes Chuck.

"Eric asked me if I thought Chuck might have believed her. If he had any…self-worth issues. "

Nate shakes his head, nearly amused, in spite of the situation, and then continues, a skewed smile on his lips. " I mean, it's Chuck. Self-proclaimed narcissist and the most vain person I know, except maybe Blair. And here he goes, getting drunk and calling the step-brother he has disowned to say that his own feelings aren't worth anything. Nearly apologizing."

Vanessa leans back, more attentive, steals swiftly his coffee cup and sips it nonchalantly.

"Personally, I thought his behaviour reeked auto-compensation. Com'n, even I saw the way his father spoke to him and it was the farthest from affectionate I could imagine even if I tried. Without even considering the issue of his mother, about which, I know, I'm not supposed to know, so we'll pretend Dan never mentioned to me- "

She stops abruptly when she notices the obvious confusion marring her boyfriend's boyish features, the frown suddenly creasing his eyebrows.

"You have no idea of what I'm talking about, do you? "

The frown becomes more pronounced as the blonde boy leans in toward her. "No. What has Dan to do with Chuck's mother anyway? The woman died in a plane crash before the Basses even came to New York. "

Vanessa takes a longer sip from his coffee cup, wishing she had kept her mouth shut. She hates betraying Dan's confidence like that, the idea of violating once more the Bass family privacy. But honestly, she expected Nate would know the story.

"Sometimes I think I open my mouth only to change foot" she mutters, sarcastically, knowing very well every choice she makes at this point is doomed to be wrong, On a hand, she has no right to interfere, on another, if knowing whole the truth might help Nate to help Chuck, she has no right to keep her silence.

"Vanessa-"

"I'm guessing none mentioned to you why Chuck was so hell-bent on humiliating Dan when you all visited Yale? "

"You mean there was a real reason?"

Nate' s cheeks flush a little when Vanessa throws him a odd glance in response at that.

"It's not my business, and Dan will rip a new one for nosing in, but I think it might help if you knew that Dan was trying to get a writer, Shapiro, to give him a recommendation for Yale. "

" I know that part, it was the week I was with my maternal grandparents? "

"Yes. What you don't know is that Shapiro asked Dan to write a story on Chuck. Getting inside his head first, to find out what made the bad guy of his novels so bad."

"It doesn't make much sense. I thought Dan was set on becoming a novelist, not a journalist."

"True. But apparently Shapiro is fixated on taking inspiration out of real life and Dan indulged him. Asking Chuck to guide him in a walk over the dark side… "

She trailed off, hoping to clear that expectant and slightly upset expression out of Nate' s visage.

"Why would have Chuck accepted? They don't like each other."

Actually Chuck doesn't like people much at all, but it felt wrong to add that now. Why had neither of the two boys involved mentioned anything to Nate?

"Boredom? Whatever the case, Dan managed to gain his trust long enough to spill something very personal-"

"and then he has learnt the truth" Nate finishes for her, resolutely. It makes more sense now, all the spite, the seemingly pointless ruthlessness. There was a score to settle. At the time, he had thought Chuck's action were motivated solely by his loathing for the proletarian class. The very same class Nate suspectedhe was meant to belong in, when he and his mother were a step away from losing everything.

His stomach churns unpleasantly when he realizes he never gave his friend the chance to explain his actions. Not like it would have made a difference. It was improbable that he would get the full story on whatever had really happened, but knowing Chuck's taste for grand-styled paybacks, the ordeal with Skull and Bones was getting off scot-free.

"So what's this secret?"

"Chuck's mother died in childbirth"

 _Evelyn Bass died giving birth to h_ _er only child._

_Bart Bass possibly never forgave said child to have prematurely ended his beloved wife's life._

Nate and Blair sit in the Waldrof sitting room, contemplating these two very simple, very complicated revelations.

"I don't understand why he never told us the truth."

Nate states casually, just to break the uneasy silence. While it's easier to talk with Blair now they are bound by anything but familiarity and a tentative friendship, the current subject would make him uncomfortable enough even if his ex wasn't so focused on glaring at his feet. What is she thinking?

"Obviously he's ashamed" Blair snaps, with a tension he hopes it isn't directed to him.

"Dan is _so_ going down when this is over" she continues, and Nate hides his relief. He nods at the sharp glance she directs his way, daring him to contradict her.

 _No materna_ _l , protective instincts, huh?_

"I didn't expect this level of hypocrisy."

"I did "

Still, Dan hardly even interests him now. The real problem is that Chuck needs being found and dealt with soon. Before he does any real damage to himself. If Nate tries to be honest with himself, he admits that his urgency is fuelled by guilt. There must to be too many things he never paid enough attention to, if his best friend would prefer confiding in someone he despises rather than him. Even while he seethes at the conjured image of Dan for being here with Chuck for the wrong reasons, he can't shy away from the shame of his own careless mistakes.

The circumstances must have made so much more humiliating for Chuck, being put in favour of a new aquaintace who had tricked him so unexpectedly.

It's an error Nate knows he has done before, in many different occasions. Perhaps he might say he has used the Humphreys too, because although he bestowed so much importance on their solidarity, respect and support, now that his life is back on its track the memory of time with each one of them has grown dull.

He is left feeling like he has betrayed throughout inactivity and inertia those who truly mattered, who were always there, who saw he wasn't much of a golden boy but still lingered around.

To his defence, he might say he has never suspected they could need him too.

Not Charles Bass, with his hell-can-care-attitude and his fierce coldness, his stark self-sufficiency and ability to talk for hours without saying anything.

Nate studies Blair as the brunette girl rubs her arms self-consciously, notices the faint lines of distress on her face. Her cool beauty has never warmed his blood like Serena's ineffable, sparkling light could, he is free to admit it now, but the burning determination and the inflexible strength behind it could have sustained him and drawn and aroused his envious respect for ages.

Watch them now, his best friend and his ex-girlfriend, polar opposites on their hard surfaces, equals in their ability to manipulate and stand on their own, so soft and defenceless to each other.

It gave him hope .

Blair tries to remain still to contain the agony spreading in her veins. So many emotions and thought fight for dominance in her head and heart than it's very difficult to focus on a single one and quiet it.

Relief- _he hasn't left because I wasn't good enough to sooth his anguish. It's just that he hates himself._

Pain- _he hates himself._ _He was raised to think of himself as some murdering monster._

Fear- _Nobody is there to stop him from punishing himself._

Love- _He has no idea of how unique he is. Might I show him, as he showed me?_

Incredulity– _a_ _secret we never knew, and we were his friends_. _He didn't trust anyone enough to let them peek inside_.

Anger- _How did they dare? Stupid Bart and shallow Lily and silly herself for saying to him he wasn't human enough to be loved._

Determination- _we won't allow him to drown. I'll show him I meant it._

And suddenly her mind is clean and quiet and she is wondering how it must to feel, growing up knowing your birth wasn't a blessing, but the one event your father would erase from history if he could, because even if he doesn't hate you, he loved your mother more.

She wonders about how ashamed he must be been, to tell his friends that his mother died in plane crash, that he didn't remember her rather than he never knew her.

She wonders how lonely, how strange it must have been, spending those early years of his life without a father and without a mother, no affection or company but the one the nurturing of a nanny could provide .

She finds herself sympathizing with his sociopathy- a trait of him she has always mocked before- and although she aches all over for his emptiness and his grief, she is glad to know the truth at least, because even if he is not here, she has never felt closer to anyone. She understands him now, and it shall be enough until they find him and convince him to let them love him.

Blair tucks a brown lock behind her ear, a new resolution taking form, and finally turns to Nate and huffs:

"We need getting together Serena and Eric and drag his ass back to NYC as soon as Jack finds him. We are going sit Chuck down and give him the lecture of his life. There's no way he will be able to resist the full gory glory of the Unjudging Breakfast Club if we ambush him as a group"

It's a simple strategy, but it wins over Nate immediately and unsurprisingly. "It sounds like a plan. "

The smile they share is not a happy one, but it connects them more deeply than the thousand casual ones they exchanged in past.

For once, they are on the same page. They _can_ show one very stubborn Chuck Bass where he belongs, and they will succeed.


	3. YESTERDAY' LOVERS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it takes seeing your world to shatter before realizing which strings keep it together. A post 2.13 story about Chuck rediscovering the meaning of words like family, friendship, and love. An occasion for those around him to realize the impact he had on their lives and to stop his freefall into darkness .

**PART THREE:** **YESTERDAY' LOVERS**

The morning after, Nate is enjoying a pre-school joint all by his lonesome, hiding in a blessedly hidden corner of St Jude courtyard, when he gets the shock of his life. None other than Blair Waldrof is strolling regally toward his and Chuck's supposedly secret hiding place like it was the most obvious place to be.

"Serena is on her way back ." She announces it proudly, scrunching up her nose at the aroma of burnt pot. He isn't given time to comment on the news because she's already rushing straight to another point, managing to sound all together both matter-of-fact and commanding as only Eleanor Waldorf could have taught her.

"Look Nate, I just need to know that once we concoct a plan and put it on the road you'll be all the way in. I know you mean well but the truth is that most of time, when things get rough you tend to…go with the flow. We can't afford it now. In fact, the whole point of our action willbe to go against Chuck's flow, since I can't imagine he'll be too happy to find out we all read Dan's little investigative experiment."

Eric had found it last night inside Chuck's bedroom, when the three were looking for some clue to where he could have gone. Blair made a mental note to advise Cabbatch Patch to consider another career, because if a supposed writer constantly needed to hunt interesting real life characters to compensate the prolix dullness of his prose, he didn't have much of an artistic future.

Nate looks at her blearily for few seconds. and then frowns prettily. "Let's skip that part – he deliberates- but beside that, do you believe it's fair to drag our issues on this?."

She rolls her eyes, her full lips curling upward sarcastically, and he remembers all too well why they broke up.

"Oh, please. This has nothing to do with our ancient history, however you might say it sets certain precedents. It's all about you and Chuck. I've no intention of being steamrolled over only because I'm the only one willing to put my foot down. You always let him to do as he pleases and if you disagree, you get lost until he recovers sense. We don't have time for that now. How is he supposed to know you aren't just around for habit, if you get lost every time he pulls a temper tantrum? "

"Don't be ridiculous!- he lashes out, maybe a bit more harshly than he meant to- I've been his friend longer than you have been…whatever the two of you are now. "

It's strange, the way he knows perfectly well what his best friend and his ex-girlfriend are to each other, yet he can't truly say it out loud to her face. It stings a little, the same way it did when he had seen Blair so affectionate and soft at the Bart's funeral, desperately trying to reach a broken boy who merely acknowledged her.

Nate knows better than to mistake the faint bite of bitterness for jealousy; the feeling is too fleeting, too contrasting with amusement he most often experiences in watching Chuck and Blair dancing around each other, to be that. But certainly, after so many years of history shared and half-resented obligations, he can't begrudge himself for feeling a small measure of proprietary loss.

But this is not his point, and Nate realizes that his answer has done nothing to disprove Blair's silly allegations.

She smiles brightly to underline her sentence, adding in what he privately refers as her preppy-sweet-voice "Then act like it"

And then she turns on her heels and leaves.

* * *

Chuck stumbles his way into his hotel, hating the weakness in his limbs and the fog in his memory which wouldn't let him remember how he had fallen so low as to awake naked and sandwiched between two travestites with no idea of where he was and why. He hates this kind of late mornings with a passion and he hates himself for needing the peculiar brand of self-destruction. Two steps beyond the door and he freezes, his unfocused eyes accidentally sliding over a familiar outline and suddenly unable to stray away.

There, in the lobby, he recognizes that back,- _her_ back- the shape of her shoulders, the way a tight, long skirt hugs every curve of her boney ass.

She may have dyed her copper-brown hair to a dull, artificial black, but he still knows it's _her_.

Georgina Sparks.

For a moment, he is sure he must be hallucinating, but there's such a familiarity in the way the woman-who-can't-be-her inclines her head aside, while she is talking to the doorman, than his feet move toward her before he can persuade them to not.

He staggers and almost falls all over his feet the exact moment the doorman's gaze meets his and nods. When the woman turns, a fraction of second before his hands grip the Reception' counter for support, Chuck isn't surprised, only freakishly relieved.

He shouldn't be, he isn't so far enough gone to not understand this, but he is anyway, because her blue-green irises, thick-lashed and large, are just what remembers and they are twinkling in wicked delight as they recognize them.

It's the first time in weeks he looks into eyes that see _him_ and it's almost like being again a real person and not the caricature of an intoxicated tourist.

It's not what he wanted, being found and especially being found by _her,_ yet the rush of anger dies quick, replaced by a mellower emotion. Unwilling gratitude.

"Hello Stranger, how fancy is this, finding you here ?"

Her full mouth opens and closes in front of him, the husky voice caressing the syllables of a pitiful cliché greeting and flavouring it acidic.

For the first time in years, it doesn't matter how much he squints his eyes, he can't see the poisonous whore who stole his secrets only to mock them, who fucked his uncle only to spite him, who fucked with his mind only for her enjoyment.

The girl he is seeing now, in her place, is the one he never wanted again. It's the girl he grew up with, the one who taught him that you didn't need to laugh out loud or smile endearingly if your smirk was convincing enough, the one who stole porn from her cousin' collection so they could watch it over Thanksgiving in his room, laughing over popcorn, vodka and gin between taking notes of a few intriguing moves and positions .

Ah, they were never the family type, but then they weren't given much choice about that.

Her eyes shone a dark cobalt colour, and he could feel himself falling a bit into them…or maybe he is just losing his balance, because her pale, long-fingered hands are on his chest, bracing him. He studies those hands for a moment, and suddenly he's intensely aware of how slender they are, not small and dainty and _perfect_ like Blair's hands.

Irritated at himself for letting _her_ back in his thoughts, Chuck raises his gaze to Georgina's face again.

She's grinning like a kid who discovered Christmas is coming sooner, and he knows it's not a good sign.

He has already learnt that Georgie's support always comes with a price higher than the gain. If he's lucky, they could have just enough fun than she would feel compelled to annihilate him completely, just to prove to herself that she doesn't need it, that nothing actually means anything to her. Years ago, he promised himself he wouldn't fall in that trap again.

But then… isn't self-destruction what he craves now? Georgina would help him in style, so what if he's weary of strangers, of the weird feeling of alienation that flutters in his chest day in and day out?

Her throaty laughter throbs around him, a not innocent nor welcome sound – he always so disliked being laughed at, and she knows it- but still it'san oddly comforting one. "Oh, Charlie, you are taking the meaning of 'wasted' to a new level, you realize. I haven't seen you so out of it since that weekend in Carter's Mexican summer house "

Ah, his first –and for long time last- experience with PCP. He has fragmentary but painfully vivid memories of running around the house drooling like a wild dog, of Georgina antagonizing him into fucking her hard and animalistic on the beach. The morning after, he awoke alone to the shaming realization he was half-naked –sand scraping his back and _all over his hair_ , a torn shirt hanging off him, pants nowhere to be found - and his body was tattooed with greenish bites' imprints and nails' scratches. He was fourteen and utterly terrified for the first time in his entire life.

"You were worse off than I was."He reminds her, frowning mock-sternly in front of her apparently friendly teasing. After banishing her from New York, this isn't the approach he should be receiving. And nothing never stays guileless or friendly with G, anyways.

He can't afford lowering his guard, but frankly all this necessity for coherent thought is getting on his nerves . If he wanted to think, he would be still in New York.

So when she plays with his collar , he doesn't pay attention to whatever she's saying, and he doesn't mind the clocks resetting in his head when her palm cups the back of his head and her lips caress and coax his open.

He's re-enacting the first time she ever kissed him. They were children laughing on a rooftop and screaming how they were king and queen of the world. He'd confided to her that that space splitting open around them made him to feel like he was dissolving into nothingness and that funny-scary feeling was oddly soothing to him. She kissed the spot behind his ear, one of her thin arms loose around his waist, and he shivered for the first time as she whispered about how she would have loved it too, the freedom of being intangible and invisible, like the wind that touched everything and yet escaped everything.

It's easy to fool yourself when you are a kid. There's always a fairytale you are willing believe, even some are more twisted than others.

Chuck Bass clings to Georgina Sparks that morning, silently begging her to rewrite his story.

Soon, he'll learn her new hotel room is a floor away from his. She'll drag him inside and he'll allow her to slam his back against the wall. His eyes will roll in the back of his head because for a moment every nerve ending of his upper body will return to blazing life. He'll struggle a little as her weight will crush him, being reminded too starkly just what he's betraying. It'll last few seconds but they'll be enough to wish he died. He'll black out on the floor, Georgina's nails bruising his forearms and her voice suffocating him with her filthy suggestions and demeaning pet names.

Hours…no, days later, although Chuck won't understand this at first, he'll regain consciousness to discover his sweaty body boneless and lethargic still on the floor, legs entwined with hers.

He'll smile while feeling like crying, because they will look like twins: pale flesh marred with bruises, dark hair mussed and unkempt. He'll move a greasy strand off Georgina's face gently, but he'll felt so very dirty, because he'll realize that finally he can no longer sense the ghostly imprint of Blair's embrace around his shoulders. He has allowed it to fade, he has covered it up with another's smell and insisting touch.

 _It must be fine_ \- he'll scowl- _I wanted it so._ _All_ _pure things come to an end. Better sooner than later._

* * *

Time grows stale to Chuck and Georgina becomes the temperamental shadow behind every step of his. She feeds him, coddles him, screams at him and screws him, whether other women are helping her along or not. It's a delirious caricature of their adolescence, but reality keeps intruding once in awhile, like a sensation of weirdness which creeps on him at the most unexpected occasions, suggesting dispassionately that his life no longer fits, or perhaps, he's the one who no longer fits into it.

It's fucking terrifying: he has no place to come back to anymore, and spiralling down is all what is left to do.

_Damn_ _._

Chuck retches violently, his worn down body nearly convulsing as he is bent over to pay homage to the porcelain gods.

Shivering, he sits unsteadily on his heels, almost falling backward but eventually curling on himself, hugging his knees to his chest like a sick child.

Closing his eyes, he hears those words in his head, tormenting and mocking his sanity.

_I love you. I'll stand at your side through anything. The darkest thought you ever had…_

They run in circles within his head, a menacing echo of illusions that will never be concrete.

Those words.

_I love you._

_She_ had no business in saying them to him and he loathes her for it.

Who the fuck did she think she was? In a world where Nate came and went as he pleased, - only remembering the way back out of habit, probably- and where his sodding father barely knew him but still despised him, where Eric blessed him with that agonizing-puppy-look and Lily slapped him with unfair hands and words, where even easy Serena walked the line between sympathy and distrust and women only touched him for his billions or his cock… yeah, in THAT world where did _Blair-fucking- Waldrof_ get the right to claim… _that_ , like she was never going away?

Fuck –Fuck- Fuck.

If only she had played their game, just once more, he might have stayed that night. In her arms, in her bed, surrounded by her scent and buried inside her pliant, _clean_ body, compensating her pity with rough sex, her understanding with blind lust.

How to make himself useful, or even convenient he knows, but giving and receiving affection is an alien concept.

An equal, practical exchange, he could have dealt with. Maybe.

Instead, she has sent him to drown in unfamiliar waters which shake him even in her absence.

Years ago, before … everything and anything between them changed, he had observed her with morbid fascination . At the time he was almost amused by the fourteen years old version of her, so prim and composed, fiercely clinging to Nathaniel's side, doe eyes flashing in envy of Serena's natural charm under her cool façade, her sweet smile turning pretentiously fake at the most peculiar moments.

Chuck remembers privately mocking her unrequited attachment to Nate even while he helped her to keep her claws sunk in his best friend. He remembers fantasizing about the moment Nathaniel would finally wake up and violate her perfect purity.

His imagination used to indulge those scenes at night… the way Nate would touch the most intimate parts of her, melting her prissy stance, the erotic way her face would display her weakness without any shame, the way her dark eyes would glaze over in adoration rather than simple passion. The way those caresses would pry away her last defences, but without tainting her, only making her body warm and soft where it was cool and rigid.

He knows now, those worthless fantasies were based on equally baseless, useless desires.

Owning her, being the golden boy… being worthy of something pure and important and valid.

Chuck Bass isn't born to get anything like that.

"Chuck? What are you- "

He turns his head toward her as Georgina enters the bathroom, blinking slowly as he tries to decipher why her face is frozen like that.

Suddenly, he realizes his throat is constricting oddly. His cheeks are wet.

His hands slam on his visage to cover his panicked horror.

He is NOT crying.

"Don't look at me!"

It comes out as a scaresome breed between a growl and a sob and he feels his nails digging in wet flesh, clawing and tearing his skin.

Panic rises in waves inside him and he's insensible to anything but his wildly beating heart, which feels so heavy hammering in his chest. There's no pain and he can't see the blood on his fingers, not until some unrecognized force –Georgina, he'll recall later- pries his hands away from his face.. Her body traps his against the wall and his frantic, jerky struggles to resist her don't last long. Somehow she 's stronger, and she obliges him to keep his arms down, at his sides. Her long-fingered hands are closed so tightly around his wrists than she might be cutting off his circulation, but he's barely aware of that too.

Yet, even in his hysterical state, he's inhaling her scent with every mouthful of air he pants in or out. He allows his face to fall onward, against her heaving breasts.

He closes his eyes and tries, so hard than it's the closest to a prayer he ever came to, to force everything to fade out of existence.

And perhaps some deity who assists addicts and miscreants listens, because when he opens them again, he's still there, curled on the floor, but his brain is too fuzzy to remember why his cheek is pressed on Georgina's chest.

He doesn't move regardless of that, because she is soft, sticky but warm, and there's something comforting about her arms clutching him and keeping him in place, her heartbeat so fast-paced under his ear.

* * *

They are all monsters, she and Chuck and her father and Jack. They are all the same. This certainty is all what Georgina has to keep herself going through her nights. A lesson so simple and real and hard and unforgiving, but somehow comforting in its hollow equity.

Yet, she is here, caressing Chuck's face and smoothing his damp hair. His features are as sharp and beautiful as they are always been , but now exhaustion slackens them in a disturbing resemblance of peace.

He sleeps beside her like he trusts her inability to damage him further, when the truth is that he simply doesn't care anymore.

She learns she hates those red welts marring the pale, imperfect but stunning symmetry of his face . Her fingertips graze them reverently, trying to erase them.

More than anyone else, she understands the reasons behind his fury, the inner void which swallows every fleeting source of joy. His lack of faith in anything which stirs a vivifying anger that drains him of so much more.

She understands, and surprisingly enough, she doesn't want be the one to destroy him.

They might be the same, in many ways, if only he hadn't so many illusions holding him back, so many strings keeping him in place. She's strangely reluctant to cut them loose. A tender curiosity keeps her wondering if they would survive the strain of time.

Betrayal poisons everything in their world, so… if given the chance, would _they_ save him?

She wonders and plays with the idea of setting the stage for it. A play whose script has possibly two alternative endings: compassion or indifference, salvation or final perdition.

Her mind lingers over the improvised project, indulging a new urge to utterly destroy Jack for no sensible reason but her need to distract herself from the fact she doesn't know which endgame she prefers: being proved right and watching Chuck as he falls in the blackness or being proved wrong and witnessing _his_ so-called friends scrambling to put him back together.

So what if she had another, more profitable plan underway? It's not like she needs the money, material goods are so much easier to obtain than a good game.

Improvisation is her life's salt, after all, and Jack Bass will have never what it takes to keep her on a leash.


	4. TODAY'S LOVERS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Acameo from Carter Baizen, a group rescue, an confrontation between Chuck and Blair.

**PART FOUR: TODAY'S LOVERS**

Carter sits with his back against the bedpost, a long haired brunette wrapped in his arms, her back resting against his chest, her locks tickling his nose. A blanket barely covers their naked bodies. Her eyes are closed and her face is relaxed. It's a rare event, and Carter is fascinated by the way placidity transforms her visage. With her soft, delicate features enhanced by an aggressive make up, his lover usually resembles a ravenous predator. But in those rare moments, when she lies bare and exhausted in his arms, he can see a careless fragility in her. His father had once told him- around the time Carter was playing the smartass rebel card – that someone who cares about nothing can be very strong on surface, but is also very easy to break once you move past that.

Part of his obsession with _her_ springs from the fact that all his attempt to slip underneath her hard shell have failed. _She_ is unfazable, cynical to a fault, and there's this cold, disgusted anger at the world she wraps around herself like a mantle. Yet, at the current moment, all he wants is to preserve that peculiar, rare expression on her face.

He leans his head around, lingeringly kissing first her cheek and then the bottom of her ear. She sighs, not in contentment, he knows, but in annoyance.

Nothing riles Georgina Sparks up more than casual gestures of gratuitous affection. For some probably masochistic reason, he adores pissing her off, regardless of the often unpleasant consequences. His smirk presses on her skin, inviting her to lean her head over to expose her neck. Never the one to give up a free opportunity, he places several – not gentle , he reassures himself- open mouthed kisses along her neck, stopping to nip at her shoulder. She growls softly.

"Tired ?"

Georgina 's eyes stay closed, but he can see her licking those nice lips of hers before speaking, her voice low, throaty and sultry, the way he favours it.

"Are you?"

"Never" he promises, his hold on her hips tightening.

She shifts, rubbing lazily against him as her upper body turns to face him. Carter smirks wider, enjoying the friction, the sensation of her breath on his face…and just when he is about to kiss her, her hands levers against his chest and she's lifting up, distancing herself from him.

"Too bad. I can't stay."

Carter leans in, unwilling to let her go so easily. Her malicious grin, he convinces himself, must just be provocation. As a precaution, he lets his fingers to dig in her lower back' flesh , just enough to build her appetite. His little wildcat can never resist the promise of a little of pain, and he is a fan of anything which will keep her in his bed longer.

"Of course you can"

From the sheer amount of sleazy bravado in his tone, you would never guess he has doubts.

Her spine arches, pushing her breasts to an uncomfortably intimate contact with his chest .

"I got people to see" she purrs, pursing her mouth in a mimicry of severity.

"I'm sure _Charlie_ won't lack of ways to kill his time without you "

It's something to loath himself for, the resentment that exudes freely from his use and pronouncement of Georgie' s exclusive nick-name for the Bass orphan but hell, she is been so focused on her 'assignment' those past two weeks, that he has hardly seen much of her.

She chuckles, amused by the power they both like pretending she doesn't have over his moods.

They hang around occasionally, scheming a lot and fucking for the rest of time, and it doesn't need to be complicated. It's simple. At least, it's simple when there are enough miles between Georgina and her first…first whatever .

She kisses him deeply, taking his face between her smooth, cool palms. Then, in pure Sparks-style, just when he's getting into it, just when his mind is going hot and cloudy, she draws back abruptly.

"That's exactly why I should hurry." She singsongs, disentangling herself from him with swift ease. When Carter recovers, she's already on the opposite side of the room, picking her dress from the floor. His gaze narrows on her slim figure as she slides it back on with feline grace, ignoring completely her underwear and moving in front of the mirror to check if any marks are visible on the pale column of her throat. New marks, that is because she would hate to upset _Charlie._

Suddenly irked by the prospective of his…well, of Georgina jumping out of his bed and straight in the next one ,not to mention disgusted to be passed over in favour of a whining, intoxicated boy, Carter feels compelled to irritate her.

"You are losing your touch, G."

"I'm not."

She deadpans seriously, fingers combing her messy tresses. _Not so rushed, now_ \- he notices with a certain satisfaction.

"You were supposed to be done ages ago."

It isn't a complicated plan to execute. Get Chuck nicely wasted, keep him company and encourage his attachment to chemical drugs. Push him on a plane for any European capital and cause enough of a public scene to give Jack Bass solid justification to lock his nephew inside a mental home.

Georgina half-turns back toward him, giving him a smile that looked remarkably like a threat.

"Oh, that. I was perhaps a bit precipitous to get into business with Senior Bass. Entertaining or not, it isn't worth losing such an old friend. "

Carter rolls his eyes, unimpressed. Does she really believe that he's so stupid to buy that load of bull? "Please. You were looking forward to getting even with your old pal for exiling you to Penance"

Indifferent to his sarcasm, she shrugs and wraps a green foulard loosely around her neck.

"I was, but it's ancient history by now, it isn't? There's no vindication in kicking Charlie when he's already so pathetic. Besides, his exclusive attention has made up for his misstep. There's something so hot in how dependent he is on me right now. It would be a shame to ruin it. "

His hollow laughter falls between them, and although it meant to be derisive, it feels surprisingly self-depreciating instead.

"So you will do what, tell Jack you changed your mind and want to keep his nephew around as a pet?"

" Jack can go and fuck himself. What is he going to do? Sue me for not getting his nephew institutionalized? I'm sick of his pitiful calling me and ordering me around like he's someone important and not a whimpering, overcompensating cretin. Ugh. I think I might get Charlie sober only to piss him off. "

"Are you serious?"

Normally, an annoyed Georgina would turn him hard in a matter of seconds, but today there's something about disturbing about it all.

He shakes his head, not quite ready to accept that she is truly obsessed with Basses. Again. Where is the appeal, anyway?

"Always"

It feels like forever until she's gone, but when the door closes soundlessly behind her back, he doesn't need to think.

His eyes still burn on the closed door, but his hand reaches for the cell phone on the nightstand.

Oh, Serena will love to hear about what her fuck up of _brother_ has been up lately.

* * *

"Where have you been?"

Drink in hand, his back is to her when she enters. He is watching out of the window, but not really seeing anything.

Her silence irks him, and when he finally turns his face toward her, the motion vaguely jerky, she remembers there's nothing quite like the way Chuck stares at her.

Restless desperation, angry hunger, a sense of impeding tragedy. They are all written in those hard lines of his body, in those feverish eyes.

It's a mesmerizing sight, although it tightens her gut with something that is more like anxiety than lust.

Chuck hasn't looked at her like this since… since that time she can't forget nor remember. They were fourteen and there were four pregnancy tests in his suite' bathroom, all positive, and a list of potential fathers they had drawn to pass time while they waited. She had forced him to wait with her, of course, after enticing him away from a party with the promise of sex. He had laughed at her antics, mocked her for having picked him as her 'bestest girl friend of the day'.

Oh, the fury she had unleashed on him that day, while she felt so dirty at the idea of another life growing inside her womb, while she strived to hold at bay her anguished panic at realizing her body was no longer hers. She hissed and threw things at him, punched him until he blocked her flailing arms. Even then, she had not cried. But he had kissed her neck and she had sighed.

" _I can get rid of it easily_ _, right?"_

" _Or_ _we might keep it and be different than our parents"_

He said it like a leering joke, but the shadows behind his gaze spoke differently to her. She kneed him in the groin.

Unwilling to focus on the past, or to dwell on the bile she can taste in her mouth, Georgina unzips her dress and sways her hips as it falls sensuously down.

Those famished eyes never leave her: it's just like falling back in days long time gone, except she can still smell Carter on herself. Promiscuity has never bothered her before, so why should it do so now?

No, she isn't bothered. Carter is nothing but a toy, a pawn. Chuck is only the mirror of her darkness. The twisted ghost-of-yesterdays who stares her unkindly, fiercely.

His arms encircle her; her lower body is pushed roughly into his.

 _I would do anything for you,_ Chuck told her once, when he was high, sand scraping between their entwined bodies, his gaze just as raw as it is now. And because she was high, too, she believed him and hoped the violence of their coupling would consume them just enough. She wished that if it could rip his flesh from his bones she would be able to melt inside him and know some kind of peace .

Who can know today, if he has promised the same to _her_ , his Ice Queen?

Georgina decides that Chuck has probably done so as she wraps her thin arms around his shoulders. Chuck always was the kind of person who either withholds everything or nothing, often in the span of the same night. Or hour.

Lack of moderation will be his downfall someday, in one way or another.

In New York, precisely two hours later, the Van Der Basses penthouse is erringly quiet.

Eric and Nate are sitting on Serena's bed, strangely fascinated by the striking contrast two girls standing in front of them pose to each other.

Serena is restless, even now she stopped babbling and looks up to her brunette counterpart for guidance: she keeps rubbing her upper arms like she is cold and nothing can quite warm her up.

Her blonde hair are in a stylish disarray, and Eric knows it's because she kept brushing them obsessively while they waited for their actual companions to arrive.

Blair is impossibly still, and nothing in her perfectly made-up face shows the agitation so openly displayed by the other's expression.

"At least we know where he is." Nate pipes in, if anything else because he has always hated tense silences, it doesn't matter how well he is acquainted with them, and this one is beginning to make him to hitch.

As if on cue, both girls turn toward him, rolling their eyes.

"With Georgina Sparks!" Serena remarks exasperatedly, snapping her hand to her forehead. After last year, this was truly last thing she expected or hoped for.

"Leave to Chuck Bass to run from a mess to run straight in a bigger mess." Blair follows up, it's the first comment she is been able to formulate since her best friend gave them a full report of Carter's phone call and it tastes bitter on her lips.

If she was a better person, she would be more worried than angry, but she isn't and the danger Chuck's in is entirely a result of his bad choices. He could have stayed. She would have kept him from falling apart…she would have protected him, from himself or from Jack. He never gave her the chance to try. He _chose_ to seek his escape elsewhere, and it was laughable his choice fell on Georgina. He could have predicted that she would sell him out .

Part of her – a feral, petty one she usually chooses to not acknowledge- is almost glad he'll be punished for hurting her, for leaving her behind so easily.

It's easy to be ashamed of those feelings: she still loves him - in a wilful, wild way she has never imagined herself capable of before _him_ \- and she hates what it will do to him, to know that his last living vestige of family is plotting to institutionalize him with the collaboration of his first lover.

Still, it's easier to be angry than devastated. Not a single aspect of this situation is looking up.

Erik sighs, his gaze wandering around the room and registering dubiously Nate' s frowning placidity, Serena's plain frustration and Blair's cold disapproval.

He has spent a lifetime watching the _Fabulous Foursome_ from outside in, and he's faintly surprised to notice he's no longer the weird kid on the sidelines. He became part of them somehow, even if he suspects he'll never get around to liking Nate all that much ( it might be because there's just a limited amount of vagueness he can digest, and his mother and sister already fill the quota, or maybe it's something else he can't quite pinpoint). So when everyone seem to hesitate to step in any direction, for once he doesn't feel self-conscious. He grabs his phone, clears his voice and says loud and clear : "So, are we _all_ booking the next flight?"

Last year, having all their attention so focused on him so suddenly would be too much. He used to have a hard time with simply standing up at the centre of his classroom to read in public. He used to hide that uneasiness behind a stoic mask. Nobody noticed, nobody saw anything until he imploded. Chuck's fast, hard fall is both an echo and the antithesis of his own, and that's why Erik can't resent his actions or words. He remembers when nothing was okay inside and he was trying so very hard to not show it. He hated himself for pretending and for not pretending well enough, and that is an unbearable torture he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy.

This year he has a brother, his sister is back and his mother _sees_ him. They all see him and he doesn't mind the attention so much because finally he has learnt to not be afraid to look at himself.

"Obviously"

* * *

Chuck awakes coughing up water, a powerful water jet on his face, hitting his eyes and nose.

His first thought is that he must to be drowning.

His second one, slightly more lucid, is that he'll murder Georgina for this stunt.

Then he manages to squint enough to actually see anything, and it almost kills him.

The hard tile his naked ass is sitting on had almost persuaded him that he was awake and in a bathtub, but evidently that is not possible. No way he was really being washed by Erik Van Der Woodsen and Nathaniel Archibald.

But Nate is scrubbing his back furiously, his face beet-red and his blue eyes huge, and Erik is washing soap off his shoulders. It feels very realistic and slightly pleasing.

"I'm a sick, sick person" Chuck mutters, shaking his head to clear the illusion away. It just makes him incredibly dizzy.

"Believe me, we know"

He swears he is sensing an embarrassed smile in Nathaniel voice.

"Mph. This is perverse. Even for me. "

Georgina and her fleeting homosexual urges are rubbing off on him. Fucking perfect.

The water jet sprays on his mouth, forcing him to sputter.

"This is _not_ a fantasy. It's real, okay? "

Chuck would argue, but his brother's appearance has something so impassively serious than it disturbs him. It's like the younger boy is sad , and that is not good. He never liked even the _idea_ of an upset-Erik, and it's downright unnatural to Chuck because anyone's else misery has amused him since forever.

However puzzling the compulsion to erase Erik's discomfort, Chuck decides to satisfy it and play along.

"How?" he asks, tilting his head aside to lean into the hands that are shampooing his wet, matted hair.

"Blair corrupted a maid to let us in."

 _Blair_. The thought of her burns.

"She and Serena threw out Georgina, by way" Nate adds, after awhile.

"Nate!" Erik glowers , before Chuck can do much more than blinking dumbly at the news.

"What?"

"Don't you think this is not the best moment to spill ? "

Nate raises his chin defiantly, put off by the fact that Serena's little brother is bestowing on him a pretty decent imitation of Blair's bossy attitude, but any reply he might have voiced is interrupted by his best friend, who is looking much more sober and looking back and forth between the other two boys with a suspicious expression:

"There's a story to spill?"

"Not yet" "Yes"

"The two of you are hilarious."

* * *

When Georgina is upset, she likes playing billiards. The geometry, the precision required of the game help her to keep her thoughts in order.

This evening it's not working as well it usually does, but she is still trying for the right angle when Carter finds her.

"What has possessed you to get out dressed like that? Did you forget where are we?"

She doesn't answer him, just glaring harder at the balls on the green table. Her shot is uncharacteristically poor.

She stands up to her full height, anger radiating off her.

"They grabbed me and threw me out!"

"Should I know what are you talking about?"

"Don't even try, Carter. I know it was you who warned Serena! No one else knew!"

"What can say? I have a conscience too, G."

Like if someone could ever buy that load of crap when he's gloating like that, reeking of condescendence and self-importance. It annoys her to no end that he never bothers to cover his tracks once he gets what he wants. Moron.

"Fuck you. What you have is a misplaced sense of propriety. The only reason you nosed in was because I told you I wasn't going through with the deal."

And she counted on that. This is exactly what she wanted. She couldn't have fixed Chuck when she can't fix herself. It doesn't spare her from suffocating. They came for him, and her Charlie will hate her, and if she hasn't _him_ anymore, it means she has nothing.

Carter shrugs, relaxed and smiling as he scoots closer to her. "I don't share"

He states it as fact, and Georgina hates him for it. It makes her to feel so dirty, and she spent years teaching herself to not feel that way anymore. She needs sex to be either morbidly good or painfully bad, but men are meant to be washed off her body easily, without leaving stains or scars.

Nothing has ever terrified her as much the possibility of being contaminated inside by another human being. Charlie used to pollute her that way, just a little but enough to drive her insane with fear or want. She isn't sure she ever stopped mourning that tentative trust they shared and she worked so intently to fray.

Today she lost anyone she could have had, except Carter, who is here, who wants her. It scares her shitless.

He saunters behind her, encircling her waist like he wants to guard her against the attention of every old pervert who is watching them from the barstool.

"You can't be all that upset with me."

He whispers in her ear, tongue darting out to caress her earlobe. Like he could placate her with so little.

Yet she doesn't elbow him in the gut, although she wants to-very much- and that impulse's marginally reassuring.

"I wouldn't bet on it"

Carter kisses her nape, brushing his stubble on the skin of her neck. "Come on. Don't see how dull that scene was becoming? So I spiced it a little, big deal! I was bored, baby."

"I'm going to give you a very good reason to never be bored again" she threatens him, surprising him enough to pause in his ministrations. All those women he has had, and she is the only one who can make him stop feeling her up because of a compulsive need to pay attention to what she is saying or how her face looks when she says it.

"Do that. In Barcelona, maybe?"

"You're irrepressibly shameless " Georgina groans, turning her eyes upward. Indeed there's not much else to be said about the mess they are going to leave behind. Spain might do for a change of scenery, she missed Europe anyway.

* * *

The dim light can't hide the mess his hotel room is, with clothes and sheets and few dirty magazines thrown around on the floor, but nobody among his friends seems to pay attention to THAT. Their eyes are been trained on nothing but him since the instant Erik and Nate pushed him out of the bathroom,

They keep looking at him like they can see through him and he can't stand it. They say that they will bring him home, that they want to help him to kick Jack back to Australia, that Bart could have a weird way to show it, but really loved him enough to leave Bass Industries in his hands, but mostly that they don't understand why he felt he had to lie about his mother.

Chuck feels like one of those children kidnapped by elves and returned to their world millennia afterwards. The sudden, unexpected exposure to every and each person he ever held close is terrifying, humbling. He wants to run from them again and never look back, but it's too late. Reality is catching up to him finally, and he can't no longer ignore it, not when it means the backstabbing son of bitch who happens to be his uncle will win. It feels so farfetched, to think his father believed in him, after all, and that his uncle was ready to literally drive him mad .

_And they dare to call_ _*me* evil. Guess it's genetic._

He can't quite put the idea of Georgina setting him up together with the girl who held him from hurting himself the last days they spent here. Something in her eyes seemed new and sad when she tucked them in and settled against his chest just yesterday, and he can't believe he was so much of an idiot to fall for her tricks a second time around.

Everything is so confused and humiliating than he has no idea of what he 's supposed to do, but he knows he needs protecting himself so he uses up his last defence and lashes out. He mocks Serena's humanitarian streak, because how can she possibly save him when her life is even more purposeless, directionless than his? He claps at Nate jumping her defence, reminds his _sister_ to not get too used to that, since dearest Nathaniel has no real loyalty to no one but himself.

So the discussion escalates in a yelling contest between himself and the other boy, but it fails to come at a fist-fight when other hands and arms pry the two away from each other.

Reality blurs once more in a fast sequence of insults and denials, and the rush of verbal violence grounds him until Blair and Erik push himbackwards , to the wall, and it's unfortunate his rage just can't find a path of expression toward them. He can't even stomach to look into their faces. Out of everyone, their eyes are the ones he fears the most, because in front of them , he feels the most naked, and it's all more difficult if he remembers why it was their good opinion he used to search for, thus he tries to stay forgetful and numb.

"Stop playing the wife" he spits in Blair's beautiful face as she is muttering low that Nate is useless and adjusting his skewed shirt, trying to get him to calm down with her touch on his arms.

"Stop playing the hysterical child. You are too old for the part."

Her determined, cool expression is at once a relief and a curse, a reason for gratitude and loathing. He hates that she can see him like this low – broken, stupid, dragged down by his father , Georgina, his uncle- but he hates even more that she got to know that he never meant anything to anyone. He was never good, never important except in his own mind, certainly not to his father, not to his mother, not to Jack or Georgie. He is broken and now she can clearly see the cracks break fully apart.

Chuck hears the door clicking shut and realizes Serena has dragged Nate out of the room. Erik and Blair's hands drop off his shoulders, let him move freely away from them, still averting their too focused gaze.

Behind him, Erik swallows an imaginary knot and does what he has learnt best, aka pretending he's doing okay . It usually helps in calming a family imploding neurosis, and there's at least a slim chance this trick will work once more. "You can't stay away forever, Chuck. Perhaps you don't want a family, but you have one. Bart and Mom were drawing adoption papers before the accident. If you come home and sign them, you can still get everything back. From what Mom gathered, it's not like Jack made a good impression on the Board."

Chuck laughs at the idea. It's effing ridiculous but it might be his last option left. "Do you think I would want a lying whore as my mother? That I trust her enough to put all that my father worked for in her hands? Sure, why not! And while I'm at it, why don't we merge households with Humphreys! "

"You don't have a choice" Blair snipes in, arms crossed defensively, straight and proud like the princess she is.

"Mom is inconstant and messed up in her right. - the younger boy adds, more kindly- She's often egocentric, and a bit slutty, but so are you, and it's not like people get to pick their parents, biological or adoptive. They are just there. You need to make lemonade out of their lemons "

"How poetic"

"She has a good heart and she really wants to help. Come home, talk to her at least."

Erik's gentle brand of insistence isn't easy to shake off. Chuck wants to give in, leave this hovel and rest somewhere clean and familiar. He wants back those days when Lily was at his table for breakfast, when he and Serena annoyed each other for sport and there was a little brother following him anywhere.

Maybe it's possible and maybe it's not, but he cannot accept it unless it's real. He's weary of doubts and illusions, even if he doesn't deserve more.

"We can't help if you won't allow us" Blair challenges her fortune again, not too content about being excluded by the ongoing conversation. It gives her a silly suspicion she might not be necessary.

But of course, Chuck being the usual impossible Basshole he always is, he _must_ smell her weakness and dig in the bruise.

"Is this the part where you remind me how you _love_ _me_ and are ready to withstand _anything_ by my side? I thought I made clear my opinion on that subject."

Erik cringes at the harshness of the statement, especially because he has a feeling Chuck is using his presence between them to weaken the girl's resolve. It makes no sense that his step-brother would diminish so crudely those words that mean the most to him, but it was to be expected. Just like the earlier scene with Nate.

Blair waves Eric's mouth shut before he can dare deflect the attention from her, even if only to defend her.

She appears regal in her transparent effort to hold herself together. "Your opinion doesn't change my feelings. I don't care if you think I deserve better or that you deserve Georgina Sparks and the Hell's pit. I can forgive you for being so pigheaded because obviously you have not much experience with it, but when I say I love you, it doesn't mean I expect you hold my hand and reveal all you dirty secrets to me. It only means I need you to be okay to be okay myself. "

She stares into his brown eyes, notices his jaw squaring and his neck tensing as his bravado melts into a momentary vulnerability. For a moment, his features flutter to give away the most beautiful expression she has ever seen: it's sad and confused and hopeful and lost, but it has a tender, endearing childishness. Then his mouth thins and his eyes grows harder, dissolving the evidence of how close she had been to victory.

"Blair- Chuck sighs, mockingly- come on. I thought you were smarter than that. Don't buy that bullshit. You aren't in love. This is not a fairy tale. You are a pathetic slave to this fantasy of changing me, saving me. Like you are convinced that if you are the only one who can, then it will make up for everyone else tossing you aside. You are so…obsessed with being wanted, do you really think I didn't notice? That's what kept you coming back to me the first time around, after Nate finally made clear he didn't need you. It wasn't me you were after… it was the idea of someone worshipping your body like it deserved, wanting you more than anyone else because everyone else chose otherwise. It wasn't about me then, and it isn't about me today. So stop boring me to death and go cultivate some self-respect. "

It hurts. She can feel her heart swelling until she's choking on her anger and misery. How can he be so right and so wrong at the same time, she will never understand.

The pain in her eyes slices through him so violent and deep than he has to look away from it, from her. He should be saying that she's nothing to him, and that would send her away quickly enough. So he might stop hurting her with sharp-pointed truths , but he knows he can't . He's not sure he even wants it.

She's everything and he's nothing. How come she doesn't see _that?_

Erik steps back and refuses to intervene, chooses to let them pretend they are alone. He'll pretend all along with them until it's needed. There's a rawness to Chuck and Blair now as he watches them warring that renders completely senseless the distance between them. The symmetry between their expression and reactions to each other has an unique, crude physicality. He has no words to describe the feeling that hangs between Chuck and Blair and tangles their lives so effectively. He might say his friends look like poetry in motion, like every theatrical romance made flesh and bone, but it would sound like trite exaggeration.

The truth is that after all the men Lily took home and into his life, Erik came to consider love as either a caprice of the mind or an addiction of a weak heart. It strikes him now that love must be more real than that, more like the sweet darkness between two fragile people who bark more than they bite.

"I bet you would like that. You would love nothing more than sending me scurrying away, tail between legs, so you could keep repeating to yourself that nobody can really stomach you long enough to truly love you and never try to be more than you are now? I'm not Nate, Chuck! I won't bend because you use big words! I'm not afraid to say you are a coward. Who do you think you are, to talk to me about self-respect? You, who are too fuckingly scared to even try to hold on anything! Guess what? You are going back with us, willing or unconscious! We didn't come all this way for nothing. You need to man up enough to live with the fact we care about you! Not one of us is letting you out of our sight until you show a resemblance of sanity!"

When she screams at him, Blair is full of fire. Indestructible, fierce, pure. She is all Chuck has never fathomed and more.

It shocks him how much little that is changed: to touch her, to be consumed by her ire is still all he wants and fears .

" Is that so? "

"Yes!"

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

Just like that, the fight drains from them. Shoulders hunch and features relax even if glares keep on clashing. The couple turn toward Erik simultaneously, twin annoyed sneers on.

The younger boy steps back and looks up to them with a slight, placating smile, deciding that the best strategy is going to be ignoring the tension lingering the room and offering a fresh start to this conversation.

"Do you need any help with the luggage?"

Chuck cringes, shaking his head " I'm not taking anything with me except my wallet. I value my personal hygiene."

"So much that you picked this classy corner of paradise to play hide and seek."

Never a Waldrof' trait to let such an obvious opportunity for a sarcastic dig to pass unobserved.

"You are officially uninvited to play"

"A simple 'thank you' would do, Bass."

"Thank you, my queen"

The theatrical bow that accompanies the words seriously undermines their credibility, but it adds a new shine to Blair's answering smirk.

"You are welcome"

Erik steps in between them, hoping to stop them from vomiting further shots and acerbic barbs over each other.

"Let's just go down, okay? Serena and Nate should be in the lobby"

But as soon the door is open, Serena and Nate are just here, like they never moved and just waited the storm out in the hallway.

Typical – Blair snickers in distaste, imagining they've probably overheard whole the yelling contest from the safe side of the door.

She glances aside to Chuck, who is glowering half-heartedly at his best friend.

"So you are ready to come back?" Nate inquires, looking a little more uncertain than usual.

Chuck shrugs indifferently under Serena's incredulous stare. "Apparently life is too boring for you to contemplate without me to be snide about it"

"That's right" Nate nods, grinning wide and guileless, while the two girls exchange silent frowns of disbelief. How could they just to forget the earlier little accident? Their nearly coming to blows over every wrinkle in their friendship over the last two years?

 _Incredible but true._ _–_ Serena considers, overcame by a fit of hilarity- _Blair and I would torture each other for days before_ _putting aside an argument like that._

Of course, Serena doesn't envy the boys for that. At least a true row gives you the chance to sweep away any issues once for all…but anything that keeps Chuck from antagonizing them all to their deaths is good. Her step-brother looks sickly pale and uneasy, and she wonders if this might be her, one year ago, if Georgina had revealed her secret to her friends before she had the chance to confess, to trust them. Chuck is harder than she is ever been, but under some aspects, he is also more fragile, more easily frightened. Parts of her-the part who raised Erik when Lily couldn't be bothered, the part who got used to have another brother, the part who used to sense that Chuck, not Bart, was the missing tassel meant to complete their dysfunctional family, the part who remembers running away because she felt broken and nauseated with herself – wants to reach out and hug him.

He would probably push her off and run over her if she dared. It would be too much, too soon, and she respects his fragility enough to wait until he can accept their affection without fearing the exposure that comes with their newfound knowledge of him. In the meanwhile, their loyalty shall do.

She steps closer to him, blue eyes meeting dark chocolate, willing him to see her affection in her bright, apologetic smile.

Chuck doesn't say anything nor she does expect differently, but the way he stares steadily back to her, appearing a bit dazed as he tilts his head slightly back to take in his surroundings better- to imprint the sight of those four improbable rescuers standing around him on the bottom of his personal Rabbit's Hole- somehow it convinces her that he understands. This is his family.

**END**


End file.
